Bookseller Waterstones is on the verge of being sold to a private equity purchaser after being put on the block last autumn by its owner, Russian tycoon Alexander Mamut.

City analysts believe that a deal of between £200 million to £300 million is imminent with corporate financiers from NM Rothschild overseeing the sale, which has been in abeyance during the festive period.

As the process resumed last week following the end of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Christmas celebrations, chief executive James Daunt says he hopes the new owners will keep him on.

Installed by Mamut when the magnate bought Waterstones for £53 million in 2011 from HMV, Daunt – founder of the eponymous nine-shop Daunt Books – rescued Waterstones from going bankrupt.

'Waterstones was going bust but I was pretty sure if you ran it properly, then you could create a solvent business. Fortunately, Mr Mamut thought so too,’ he says.

'Financial people are logical. Previously there was a god-awful way of running the business and we were going bankrupt. We now run it in this very fluid way, which works, so I assume they are going to say “carry on”.

'I would like to stay on. I enjoy it and there is more to do, so if they will have me, it is quite a big trainset.’

NEW CHAPTER: Waterstones chief executive James Daunt, pictured, hopes to stay on with the bookseller's new owners

In 2012, Waterstones was on the brink, losing around £100 million of sales in 18 months as Kindle devastated sales of romantic fiction, genre fiction and some literary fiction.

'We made one major mistake, which was that we hadn’t seen Kindle coming,’ Daunt admits.

'It existed but in 2011 it was still quite small. Then they launched the Paperwhite. Boom. The owner didn’t panic, we didn’t panic.

'We knew we were in big trouble because sales imploded, but we were given time through that terrible period to sort it out.’

In response, Daunt’s strategy was to give each store manager within the chain the freedom to run his or her shop as if it were an independent bookstore, with its own individual character.

'The reason Waterstones was going bust was that Amazon was eating its lunch, but also the shops weren’t very good; they were the same shop up and down the land. I was fighting the inherent culture of a chain.

'My philosophy is just to let the managers get on with it. You just need to be alert to when things go wrong, if sales fall.’